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I totally get it.
In Buddhism, they teach about the eightfold path. Life is inherently a cycle of suffering that we pass through and grow from, but living virtuously helps make the world a better place and makes the pain of existing more bearable.
I've long since abandoned any belief of there being some vague notion of rebirth as a reward at the end of it all, but I have to believe that the world is a beautiful place and that it is still worth living for, even through all of the suffering. Human history has never known true peace, and yet it is a concept we can still understand and dream of.
Everyone has a right to wallow. I have had (probably too many) days feeling like there is no point in trying, just getting lost in my headspace and voluntarily depriving myself of happiness as if I didn't have any right to it. And today is admittedly one of those days.
But at the end of the pity party, I tell myself that I do have a right to be happy. Even if it takes me years, or decades, or my entire life struggling to reach that point, I have to believe it is attainable. And if it's not, at least I can die satisfied knowing I gave it everything I had. That's why, after I finish a few more bottles of soju, I'm going to take a long shower in the morning, get back out there, and let these bastards know they're not getting rid of me that easily.
That does not feel satisfying to me. And I’ll constantly wonder if there was anything else I could have done.
(Sorry I started drinking the soju so my bad if this rambles and doesn't make sense)
It helps me to pause and ground myself in the present.
When I woke up this morning, it felt like I was on the wrong end of a diverging timeline. There was some other version of reality where things made more sense and I had a clearer picture of where I needed to go. And it was nice to think about that for a while, but then it just made me sad to look around and see where I actually was and what had actually happened. And though I can keep thinking about what might come to pass and get anxious and feel even worse, truth is I ultimately I don't know. I have no way of knowing what's gonna happen, just like I have no way of knowing how the Kamalaverse I imagined would've actually worked either. I can keep thinking and getting anxious about every worst case scenario, and fall further into despair by comparing that to every best-case scenario I imagined, but it's not helping me at all.
Then I thought a lot more about what I should have done differently to have prevented this. Were there any lessons I could learn. And the honest answer is that there wasn't anything more I could have done. Unlike 2016, where I protest voted third party, this time I did what I thought was best, with no regrets. And even though I failed to convince a few people to vote, it wouldn't have made a difference even if I did. We're like raindrops falling into a river. A person can't change a nation, but people can, and enough raindrops working together can erode the riverbank little by little until the river changes its flow. It takes time, but it always happens.
(I'm halfway through my daily ration of grog so I'll ramble along with you)
I've been doing the right thing since 2000. I vote in every primary and general election. I donate to candidates. I did text banking for Bernie. I'm doing what everyone says you should do. Hell, in 2000 I swapped my swing-state Nader vote with someone in a solidly blue state because I knew how much it mattered.
But every election makes me feel like some kind of alien creature. People act more and more irrationally, arguing about more and more inane things. And nearly every time things get worse. I'm trying to be a good little raindrop but the rest of them are going in the opposite direction as hard as they can.
When do I get to stop doing something that feels like beating my head against a wall? It's been two and a half decades of this and every single time I feel like we get further away from what I'm working toward because everyone else is acting crazy. And every time I feel less and less like I'm even a member of the human species. They're all so alien to me.
Shit I typed out a whole thing and my app failed to post it so sorry this is all I got.
Just wanna say I'm sorry and I'm here for you. I don't know what else I can say right now, maybe I'll think of something better tomorrow, but just wanna say that I think you're a beautiful person and hope you continue to be a shining light in a world that's getting darker and darker. Hopefully this is just the darkness before a brighter dawn.
Fucking copied it to clipboard this time so this one better post dammit.
I appreciate the sentiment, friend.
I think it's important to keep your mental health. I try not to dwell on the bad and just know that I did my part along with millions of other people. Even in the reddest state, there are A LOT of rational people.
BTW, I live in a red state so I usually feel like my vote legitimately doesn't matter. But we got the Chief Justice that we wanted (she wrote the minority opinion that an abortion ballot measure should stay on).
It's not mental health per se. I've been in a pretty good mood today, surprisingly. It's more that every election I feel like what I do has less and less impact, because everybody else isn't pulling in the same direction.
And, yeah, the state senator and representative I wanted won, so that's nice. But these tiny victories feel so useless against the weight of a nation determined to destroy itself and the world.
Plus even the rational people don't make sense to me in other perplexing ways. If I just reinserted myself into the ad-filled, algorithm-driven existence they all seem to inhabit I'd feel less like I beamed down from outer space. I'd be able to talk about TV shows and Facebook and other normal people stuff. But I've been there and I didn't like it.
Hey, I really like the sound of the eightfold path. Is there any Buddhist literature you would recommend? It might be really nice right now.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/
I like Theravada because it is closest to simply the Buddha's teachings without a lot of other side stuff that is found in some of the sects. The thing that has helped me the most is learning to allow emotions to happen but not react to them by going off on a long chain of destructive thoughts, which trigger more bad emotions in an ongoing cycle.
Meditation helps you learn how your own mind works. The idea is just notice that the thought or feeling happened and go back to concentrating or observing (depending on the type of meditation you are doing). Eventually you notice them when they happen during normal activity and can just let go of them without reacting.